I haven’t seen an initiative with the potential impact on the development tools industry since the founding of the Eclipse Foundation back in 2004, when we hosted around 12 projects related to the Eclipse IDE.

When the first Eclipse IDE was launched, it fulfilled the need for a vendor-neutral development environment that would help developers adapt to rapidly changing middleware technologies and business priorities including enterprise Java and Web services. Those were the megatrends at the time. And the impact of the Eclipse IDE was massive, as it drove a decade of enormous adoption and industry consolidation around developer tools.

While the Eclipse IDE is still extremely relevant, better than ever, and is actively used by more than four million developers, today the megatrend is cloud development. And, the world needs open source technologies and tools to drive the development of cloud native applications. The purpose of the ECD Tools group is to deliver modern, extensible, web-based developer tool platforms that can be used by everyone to enable their own cloud enablement strategies.

Huge Demand for Open Source Cloud Development Technologies

We know from the responses to our developer surveys and the enthusiastic responses to our recent Jakarta EE 8 release that there’s huge demand for open source cloud development technologies. More than 80 percent of the Java developers we surveyed earlier this year told us they either are already or plan to create cloud native applications within the next 12-18 months.

However, many developers are well beyond the planning stage. The growth and explosion of the Kubernetes container orchestration platform confirms the urgency to deliver open source cloud development technologies is very real today.

Che 7 is the world’s first Kubernetes-native IDE that’s built from the ground up for cloud native application development. It simplifies and accelerates cloud development by allowing developers who are not Kubernetes experts to immediately contribute to cloud native application development efforts. In turn, Che 7 relies upon Eclipse Theia, which provides a highly modular and extensible IDE platform built on modern web technologies that runs on both your desktop or in your browser.

Accelerating Open Source, Cloud Native Development

The ECD Tools Working Group takes our open source cloud development initiatives to the next level.

The Working Group will drive the evolution and widespread adoption of emerging standards for cloud-based developer tools, including language support, extensions, and developer workspace definition. These efforts will accelerate adoption of a Cloud IDE and container-based workspace management.

We could not create a working group of this magnitude and with this potential without the incredible level of support we’ve received from the founding members of this group.

When companies such as Broadcom, EclipseSource, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, SAP, Software AG, Typefox, and others support an initiative so strongly from its earliest days, you get a sense of just how important it is considered to be. Every one of our founders is a respected leader in their space, and we have a mix of large corporations and smaller companies, which is always great to see.

Unstoppable Momentum

I want to thank everyone who has helped us create and launch the ECD Tools Working Group. With the incredible groundswell of interest, engagement, and participation we’re seeing from both world-leading corporations and passionate developers, I truly believe we are standing on the doorstep of a very exciting open source future for cloud development tools. And, I have no doubt this community will continue to grow and thrive.